November 28, 1988 | Pop star Billy Joel makes his movie debut, sort of, in this year’s holiday package from Walt Disney Productions, Oliver & Company. You can’t actually see the 39-year-old “Piano Man” throughout the entire movie. But, then again, that’s just the way Joel likes it.
“I’m not friendly to the camera,’” Joel joshed a few days ago during a Disney-sponsored press gathering. ‘”And the camera’s not friendly to me.
“If you ever see me in the New York Daily News, on Page Six,” where candid celebrity photos are a mainstay, “you’ll know what I mean. I just don’t have a love affair with the camera.”
True, like most pop heavyweights of his generation, Joel has appeared in more than his share of music videos.
“But the reason why some of the videos have worked is I had good directors. I mean, they had to drag me by the hair to do a lot of that stuff. Because I’m pretty reluctant, in terms of doing videos. I’ve never been crazy about doing them.”
And movies? Don’t ask.
“I’ve been asked to do acting roles, and I’ve been sent scripts,” Joel said. “But I don’t know why people send me scripts. I’ve never studied acting, and I’ve never set out to be an actor.
“I was auditioned once by Sergio Leone for Once Upon a Time in America. He wanted me to be one of the Jewish gangsters. He wanted me to be in the movie, with Robert De Niro and James Woods. I said, ‘Jeez! I can’t believe it! De Niro and James Woods! It would scare the hell out of me!’ So I didn’t do it.”
So why did he agree to Oliver & Company? Well, for one thing, his co-stars were far less intimidating than De Niro or Woods. And, better still, Joel never had to step in front of a movie camera during the entire production.
That’s because Oliver & Company, which opened in theaters everywhere last week, is a feature-length animated cartoon. Very loosely based on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the film updates the original novel’s plot, transports the action to contemporary New York, and recasts Oliver as an orphaned kitty cat.
In this version, Fagin is the nervous leader of a gang of canine pickpockets. And the Artful Dodger is the ‘”coolest quadruped in Manhattan,” a jaunty mutt known simply, and appropriately, as Dodger.
Bette Midler provides the voice for a prissy poodle named Georgette. Cheech Marin speaks for a high-strung Chihuahua known as Tito. And Billy Joel sings and speaks the role of Dodger.
“I got into the role, actually, because there were no cameras,” Joel said. “We were in the recording studio, where I was very comfortable. As a matter of fact, a lot of the sessions were done in a studio that I’m used to working in. So I just walked in, and there was a microphone, and it was real comfortable.”
“The thing that’s really fascinating about all this,” said Jeffery Katzenberg, chairman of Disney Studios, ”is that when [director] George Scribner originally conceived the character of Dodger, we said to him, ‘Well, give us an idea, what is the design you have for that voice? Anybody in the world — pick somebody who really gets across that New York, street-smart, savoir-faire attitude that you want.’ And he said, ‘Billy Joel.’”
So Katzenberg’s people placed a call to Joel’s people, and a long-distance phone conference was arranged.
“They asked me if I wanted to be the voice of a Disney character,’” Joel said. ‘”And, of course, I just had a little girl. So I couldn’t wait to do something that my little girl could see, that she could relate to right away. Because I always thought all the old Disney movies, the ones with the old-time animation, were magic.
“So I met with George Scribner, who’s a zany guy and a very talented man. He knew what he wanted, and what he was going after. And we just talked on the phone, actually. I think that’s how I auditioned, just talking.
“And I thought this would be a great way to do something like this: Being able to hide behind an animated character, just using my voice.”
After Joel agreed to play Dodger, the role was literally hand-tailored for him. The animators carefully scrutinized his facial and body movements, so that Dodger would be a faithful four-legged reflection of the pop star.
“Before I read the part, the dog was a lot thinner,’” Joel remembered with a self-mocking grin. ‘”Then these guys were watching me, like they were thinking, ‘OK, how does he move his head, how does he move his mouth?’ I guess they were wanted to get more of a flavor of me to put into the animation of the dog.
“And the next time I saw a picture of the dog, he was, like — yo! — husky.”
At one point, the Disney folks expressed interest in Joel’s composing a new song for the film. “But I was in the middle of writing my own album, over the last year and a half,” Joel said. “And it was hard for me to just jump in, to write a song for the character.”
So the producers offered Joel a lively ditty — “Why Should I Worry?” — composed by Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight.
“And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll sing this song. I’ll work as just a singer for once.’ I don’t remember the last time I did that. Actually, I don’t think I ever did it.
“But I was trying to sing in character. It was, like, method singing.”
That was the easy part. The hard part was finding time to record dialogue in various studios in different parts of the world during Joel’s recent year-and-a-half concert tour.
Not surprisingly, the Piano Man was unavailable during his visit to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1987. Most of the recording work was done in Los Angeles, but some bits and pieces were done as far away as Toronto.
“’Every time I thought I was done,” Joel said, “I’d get another phone call: ‘Billy, we need you to do a couple of more things.’ Every couple of months, there’d be more and more dialogue.
“And they would change dialogue, I think, according to my voice, or ideas I would have, or things that were developing in the animation of the character Dodger was more of a New York character.
“Actually, when I started reading the dialogue, I figured this guy Dodger is kind of like the gang leader. And I thought immediately of Leo Gorcey, as Mugsy in The Dead End Kids. So that’s how I played him.”
Joel is pleased with his work in Oliver & Company. And he’s delighted that his daughter, Alexa Ray, who turns 3 next month, enjoyed the film.
“She loved it. She said, ‘Daddy’s a nice dog. He took care of the kitty cat.’”
But don’t hold your breath waiting for Billy Joel to return soon to a theater or drive-in near you. Even his wife, model Christine Brinkley, can’t get him moving in the direction of a movie soundstage.
“Chrissy always says, ‘Oh, you’d be a good actor.’ But I always think about all these kids in acting school. They struggle and they starve, and then they go to cattle calls. And they really want to be actors. And for me to just be able to waltz into a starring role somewhere — I don’t know, I wouldn’t be comfortable.
“Anyway, acting, to me, would be legitimate theater. And I don’t know if I have the patience to do a long run in a play.”
Indeed, you get the impression from talking to Joel that, if he had his druthers, he wouldn’t even appear in his own videos.
“When I’m in a recording studio, I’m like six-foot tall, I look like Cary Grant. And whatever the song is, you transcend whatever you are physically. That’s probably one of the reasons why I’m a musician.
“But whenever I see a picture of me in the paper, or a video, I say, ‘No, no, that’s not the guy who was writing the song. That’s not who I was thinking of.’
“When it gets brought down to a visual image from a piece of music, I have problems.”
